One unexpected benefit of wifey now being back at work and me being more involved in the daily childcare has been a renewed sense of equality and solidarity in our relationship.

We’ve always tried to balance the roles and responsibilities, but in the past year this hasn’t been practically possible – I’ve had to devote more efforts into work and securing more income, and she has adjusted into a full time childminder. This imbalance often caused many arguments, with both of us feeling as if our efforts weren’t being appreciated because we were operating in such different worlds, and the stresses and exhaustion of the situation often meant we could communicate with each other properly.

We now have more in common in our everyday lives, and although it shouldn’t make a difference, it has lead to better empathy between us and is bringing us closer together.

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I’ve been catching up on some old tv recently and have just finished watching the first series of Homeland. It’s been a great program, a good amount of politics, espionage, sex and violence.

Ive noticed that watching TV dramas like this have a different effect than they used to – I’m far more aware of the family relationships and the parental emotions of characters than before. This isn’t very surprising, but really hit home watching the last episode of homeland.WARNING: SPOILERS
Watching Broadie promise his daughter that he was coming home reduced me to a gibbering tearful wreck! The father-daughter relationship had been build throughout the series and both actors where utterly compelling in their final scene together.

I had better to get used to having my heart strings pulled like this as me and daughter connect more and more as she grows and develops!

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It’s hard to believe we’re only a month into this parenting adventure. I can barely remember life without baby, we’re so focused on the care and routine the days of sitting lazily on the sofa moaning there’s nothing on tv are a distant memory.

After our previously reported bust-up things are much better. The release of frustrations was a good thing and I’m glad we were both able to realise that most of what was said was born out of tiredness and frustration. Having a baby is a true test of your relationship.

But we were rewarded with a great day afterwards, I’d had time booked off so we could register baby in our first proper outing. We packed up the car and headed to the city where she was born (I make it sound a bit Mary and Joseph!). The plan was to register her, have lunch and do a bit of shopping. This was a pretty ambitious adventure considering we’d never been further than the grandparents 20 minutes away and were about to drive 40 minutes from home and put the last four weeks training and skill on public display.

Six things I learnt from our first outing

Trying to fit everything into one change bag is pretty tricky. In hindsight maybe we didn’t need three changes of clothes and four bottles of milk…

I’ve never got so much attention from women before, having a baby strapped to your chest seems to turn you into Ryan Gosling

Image from digitalspy.co.uk

Changing a nappy in public is quite stressful. I’m getting better at ignoring the usual screams when at home, but it’s a different kettle of fish when you’re so aware that everyone else hasn’t had weeks of practice building up a tolerance to your baby’s cries.

Baby has a love/hate relationship with the car seat – she screams as if I’m pulling teeth when she’s put in it, but after 10 seconds of driving she’s fast asleep in a luxury dream world.

As a result of packing half the nursery into the change bag, carrying a baby on your front and a change bag on your back gets quite heavy after an hour or so.

Although pushchairs are less agile, if you’re on your own they’re the way forward. Baby, change bag and anything else you pick up on the way gets thrown in/under/hung off the back.

We successfully got baby registered (which reminded me of giving notice to marry wifey, strangely romantic in a bureaucratic kind of way), brought lunch, ate lunch outside, changed and fed baby in the summer shade and did some shopping.

If we were American we would have high-dived when we got back to the car – baby was well, jobs completed and sanity in check – maybe we can actually do this baby thing after all?!?!

We celebrated with a glass of bubbly and chocolates after dinner while watching the recorded England vs Ukraine match (I know the ball was over the line, but the striker was offside when it was played to him so fair result IMHO).